"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...
In college, the senior electrical engineering class was polarized into
two camps, analog and ditital, largely by their choice of senior
projects. I made the mistake of designing a project that straddled
both camps (Secode Selector using RTL and DCL). Life was hell. The
debate came to a grinding halt when someone noticed that DNA sequences
were digital. So, if you dig deep enough into an analog world, you
eventually hit a digital bottom. I'll call it a win for whichever
side pays better this week.

I've tended to take a slightly different approach, which I hinted
at in my earlier response. It generally gets me some odd looks and
a "no, that can't be right" sort of reply, but I find it IS a helpful way
to look at things - at the very least, a different perspective that can
give you some new insights into how all this stuff "really" works.

As I'd said, I tend to think of the "real world" as just that - it is
neither
"analog" nor "digital." From this perspective, those two terms simply
point to different means of encoding information for communication or
storage. I find that, all too often (again, at least from this
perspective),
we tend to use the words "analog" and "digital" when what we really
mean to say are things like "linear," "continuous," "discrete," "quantized,"
and so forth. Fundamentally, I tend to see "analog" as simply meaning
" a system whereby information about a given parameter is encoded
by causing some other parameter (voltage, for instance) to vary in an
analogous manner." It doesn't necessarily mean "linear" or even
"continuous." Similarly, "digital" winds up with an even simpler
definition - "information encoded in the form of digits (numerical
values." I've never found a situation where I couldn't use these words
with those interpretations. And like I said, it IS often helpful - for one
thing, you wind up with a much better feeling for the real advantages
and disadvantages of "digital" and "analog" systems. (And you also
wind up not worrying about certain sillinesses, like whether power
systems are "analog" or "digital" - since the world no longer has to
be divided up exclusively as one or the other.)

Some people can't seem to wrap their minds around such things, but
then, I'm not really going to worry about that.

Bob M.